Marin to outlaw tobacco sales in unincorporated pharmacies

Marin County officials want to ban tobacco sales in pharmacies and are launching a crackdown that focuses on three chain store outlets.

An ordinance outlawing tobacco product sales in unincorporated area pharmacies or retail outlets that include pharmacies won swift endorsement from the county Board of Supervisors the other day, and was scheduled for adoption following a public hearing at 10:30 a.m. Tuesday.

The new regulation would take effect Oct. 1, when CVS Caremark, the nation's second-largest drugstore chain with 7,600 stores, including nine in Marin, enacts a ban on sale of cigarettes, cigars and chewing tobacco.

The Marin ordinance would apply to just the three pharmacies now operating in unincorporated areas — CVS Caremark in Greenbrae, Safeway in Strawberry, and Walgreens in Tam Valley — but tobacco activists want local cities to impose similar regulations to extend the ban countywide.

That effort picked up steam as Fred Mayer of San Rafael, head of Pharmacists Planning Service, returned from Sacramento to report that the state Board of Pharmacy voted 9-0 last week to support a ban on pharmacy sales of tobacco statewide, a move that would require legislative change.

"I've been working 15 years on this," said an elated Mayer, who operated a Sausalito pharmacy for 35 years.

As for the Marin ban in unincorporated areas, "It's targeting the bigger box retailers," Supervisor Susan Adams said. "It's another step to address the devastating cost of tobacco use." Adams added: "If one big box retailer can do this, we're thinking others can as well."

"CVS has already taken down their tobacco products, and we want others to do the same thing," said Jennie Cook of Larkspur, head of the Smoke Free Marin Coalition. She applauded the county ordinance but noted, "We have to go to all the city councils because the county can't order them to do anything."

Smokers are dwindling, she added, with surveys indicating that 7.4 percent of Marin residents older than 18 smoke, the lowest percentage among counties statewide, where the average is 11.3 percent.

Conversations with city officials across Marin about tobacco bans will begin in earnest in several weeks, she said.

Employees at the Strawberry Safeway and Tam Valley Walgreens were unaware of the county tobacco ban.

Store manager Lea Maxwell referred an inquiry to a corporate official who did not return a phone call.

"I'll have to refer you to my district manager," said Tom Gram, manager at Walgreens. The manager could not be reached, but in Illinois, Walgreens corporate spokesman Jim Graham reported the company has taken no stand on the county proposal.

"We have not taken a position in favor or against," he said. "We're neutral."

"This proposed ordinance is supported by a large number of organizations including the California Pharmacists Association, key community leaders and the California Medical Association," Assistant County Counsel Jack Govi advised county supervisors in a brief memo. "The rationale for the ordinance is that retailers who are promoting the cure for tobacco-related illnesses should not be promoting the sales of the cause."

Govi noted that a number of other jurisdictions, including San Francisco, have approved a similar ordinance and "it has survived scrutiny in the courts."